Recipe Round-Up: Blissful Bites

Today I am finishing up sharing the recipes I have made from the lovely book Blissful Bites by Christy Morgan. You can see my previous posts on this book here.

Laotian Tofu Larb: Thisis a simple dish made with steamed and crumbled tofu, and then mixed with carrot, wombok, coriander, and sauce. I left out the capsicum. It is eaten chilled, and I served it over some greens. I'd recommend eating this on the first day it is made, it doesn't keep well like other tofu dishes and started smelling a bit funky after 24 hours. But it is nice, so you'll be happy to eat it all up quickly.
Rating: :)



Tropical Three Bean Salad: With mango, tomato and avocado, this salad is a perfect summer-time dish to make. The beans are kidney, white, and chickpeas. Served over greens this is a wonderful filling and refreshing salad.
Rating: :)



Pan-Fried Tofu with Carrot-Ginger Sauce: This is easy to make, but put it on a platter and it looks fancy! The tofu is marinated in a OJ-based marinade, pan-fried, and topped with an orange-ginger-carrot sauce. Initially the sauce tastes strongly of organce, but it mellows with cooking into a nice well-rounded flavour. Serve with rice and steamed broccoli.
Rating: :)



Tofu with Almond-Coconut Cilantro Sauce: The tofu here is simply sliced and fried until golden, a simple canvas for the remarkable sauce. Seriously, the sauce is amazing! It has almond butter, coconut milk (light if you are me), and loads of fresh coriander (as well as other delicious things of course, like ginger and mirin to name two). You will not regret making this!
Rating: :D



Un-Tuna Salad: A classic chickpea tuna-style salad. I made a half recipe of this, which made enough for three thick sandwiches. The ususal suspects are here: mayo, carrot, celery, and pickles. I added the optional kelp grnaules which gave it a nice taste of the sea. Not fishy exactly, which is good as I don't like fishy, but that nice seaweed taste.
Rating: :)



Zucchini Bread: This recipe uses a mix of barley and brown rice flours, which resulted in a tasty but quite fragile loaf. I also found that the batter was extremely dry when I first mixed it, so I had to add a splash of soy milk until I got the right consistency. The recipe itself has no liquid except for some vegetable oil, apple sauce and the liquid from the zucchini, so I do wonder if that was an oversight.
Rating: :)



Lemon Meringue Cupcakes: These are made using a mix of all-purpose and kamut flour... very happy to find a way to use some of the kamut flour I have after goign through my 'buy all the fancy weird flours phase'. They have a great lemon flavour. Mine were quite dense, because I realised afterwards the I forgot to add the oil It was written at the top of the recipe because it also had the extra to grease the muffin tin as the first instruction (which I didn't even need as I was using cute wrappers), and then in the instructions later on it says to mix the wet ingredients my eyes didn't wander back up to the top of the list (above the dry ingredients) to remember the oil. Ooops! The recipe also has a lemon and coconut frosting using silken tofu, but it also used 1/2 cup of coconut oil and even though I was making these for a bake sale, I don't keep that sort of Susan-killing coconut oil still around in general. So I made a lemony cream cheese frosing for it instead.
Rating: :)



Strawberry-Mint Limeade: This came out with a very strong, sour lime taste, so I would suggest reducing the amount of lime juice a little, or increasing the amount of maple syrup a little. It may also vary dependingon how sweet your strawberries are. It is a very refreshing drink for hot days.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Adoption kitten Sweep decided that the way the scratcher was set up was boring and he decided to make his own fun with it.

Recipe Round-Up: Blissful Bites

Still Blissful, but a different cookbook. No more basil, all bite. This is Blissful Bites, by Christy Morgan. A book I love! I have used it so much, the pages are coming away from the binding. Good times are to be had. I have posted about this book several times before.

Southwest Tofu Scramble: A solid scramble with veggies and spices. I used some paprika instead of the chili powder. It also has cumin and nutritional yeast in it. Veggie-wise, it has carrot, zucchini, and mushrooms, but I also added some baby spinach to wilt into it. I did find that this scramble was a little on the dry side, it could have done with a splash of some sort of extra liquid. I served it with some thinly sliced potato that I roasted, and some store-bought guacamole.
Rating: :)



Red Quinoa Salad: I made a half recipe of this fun red salad. Despite what you might expect, it does not specify for red quinoa to be used. I used tricolour because that is what I had. It has beetroot and carrot in it, as well as avocado and toasted sunflower seeds. Even though I halved the recipe, I still used the whole amount of beetroot. The basil gives it a lovely fresh flavour, and the salad itself is sweet and earthy. The roasted sunflower seeds are also delicious.
Rating: :)



Macro "Mac and Cheeze": This is a delicious mac and cheese recipe that uses silken tofu, miso, butternut pumpkin, and nutritional yeast in the sauce. It is truly wonderful. I just used half the amount of pasta, so 250g, which was just right for my sauce preferences. Served with some steamed broccoli and BBQ sauce-glazed chick'n strips.
Rating: :D





Quinoa with Toasted Pecans and Dried Cherries: This is a nice combination that also makes for a good festive kind of salad. The salad is tossed with some Lemon Miso Dressing, which I have spoken about before. A great dressing, but I'd recommend using more of it than the recipe recommends because it doesn't go very far.
Rating: :)


Pineapple Not-So-Fried Rice: This recipe uses pineapple juice reserved from the tin of pineapple chunks to simmer carrots and asparagus until tender. And interesting technique but I found it had some sort of weird flavour from/in the asparagus. I think asparagus should be either roasted and stir-fried. I also found the flavour of this a little bit lacking, needed more pineapple and tamari flavour. Nothing a little douse of soy sauce wouldn't fix. But all in all, this one was a bit off. I served it with some steamed broccoli and some grilled tofu.
Rating: :)



Land and Sea Soba Salad: This is a great salad, whish is in the sea vegetables chapter. There are so many fun ways to use seaweed. This salad uses either hijiki or arame, I used arame. This also has carrot, cabbage, broccoli, and tofu. The dressing is easy to make, and tastes fantastic.
Rating: :D



Tofu Salad (Eggless Egg Salad): This is a pretty classic tofu egg salad recipe, with mayo and carrots and celery. The tofu in this recipe is steamed first before crumbling into the salad, which gave it a nice extra texture. I served this over lettuce for lunch, and got two servings out of it.
Rating: :)



Lentil-Coconut Curry: This is a damn delicious curry! I always soak my brown lentils overnight, and then it still took them about 30 minutes to cook through enough. You don't want them to cook too much though, as the do some more simmering in the curry. I ditched the coconut oil for grapeseed oil to sautee the veggies. The recipe has an extra one cup of water reserved to add if you need to thin it out a bit because things are sticking, but I didn't need to use it. The coconut in this does not come from coconut milk, but rather from shredded coconut that is simmered in with it. It is so good! I served it with brown rice and baby spinach.
Rating: :D



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



The other day she fell asleep holding onto her back paw and it was just so very sweet and cute.

Christmas Day 2017

For the last few years, I have started my day with a 7.30am bikram yoga class. I find it a really lovely way to start the day (though yes it is hot and sweaty and sometimes makes me regret my life choices), and afterwards they always have a big fruit platter that makes up my breakfast. In previous years I have come home and made a smoothie afterwards, but this year I was so full of fruit that I didn't feel the need. I came home, showered, we opened presents and then I spent a few hours pottering around in the kitchen getting a late lunch ready. At some point I had a Rebel Kitchen Chai that had been kicking around my fridge for ages and some cherries when I got a little peckish, but I knew we had a substantial lunch coming up. But first, my presents! The pink mushroom is a kitchen timer.



My parents are not vegan, but for the last several years we have had a vegan Christmas lunch, which is lovely. For this year's 'centerpiece', we had the Field Roast Celebration Roast, stuffed with butternut, apples, and mushrooms. We just had the little half roast, but that was plenty for three people after we baked and sliced it, and we had some left over as well. We all really liked it.



I have a dwindling supply of precious frozen cranberries (they are almost impossible to find here most of the time), so I made a half batch of the Orange-Scented Cranberry Sauce from The Superfun Times Cookbook. This was OK, I am glad I made it the day before to let it mellow, as it was super tart when I first tasted it after it came off the stove. I used bottled fresh OJ for it, so I didn't have any zest to add. A decent sauce, though not as good as the one from Keep It Vegan that I have made for the last couple of years.
Rating: :)



We normally make the Potato Squashers from Eat, Drink, & Be Vegan, but this year the potatoes were too big. So I made the Crushed and Crispy Potatoes from Eat Like You Give A Damn, which are basically the same thing but with bigger potatoes. My potatoes were slightly different sizes as well, but they baked up perfectly, squashed easily, and then crisped up. I did flip them and give them a final 10 minutes at the end. The smaller ones are a bit better, as there is a higher crispy to creamy ratio, but these were still great.
Rating: :)



Because Christmas is in summer here, the rest of our spread was made up of salads. Starting with the Wheat Berry and Green Bean Salad with Dried Cranberries and Celery from Food52 Vegan. But wait, you say, where are the green beans. Well, some doofus (me) forgot to write them on the shopping list, so I had to make it with frozen peas. It worked fine, and there was still some crunch from the celery and toasted pecans in it, but the green beans would have been nicer. The recipe calls for 1 cup of dried wheat berries, but I only had 2/3 cup and it made loads. I switched the ratio of walnut oil and lemon juice in the dressing to have more lemon juice, otherwise it was a bit dull. I also think I would have liked a few more cranberries. But I loved the wheat berries, they were so nice and chewy. A good festive salad!
Rating: :)



I also made the Creamy Broccoli Salad from Blissful Bites, which is an old family favourite. As well as broccoli, it has grated carrots, sliced radishes and chickpeas in a creamy mustard and mayo dressing. I've posted about how great this is before. And it keeps well, so great to take along for a potluck!
Rating: :D



The final salad I made was the Festive Roast Vegetable Salad with Tahini Lemon Drizzle from Dianne's Vegan Kitchen. We normally have hot roast vegetables, but with a prediction for 35dC on Christmas day (that ended up being even hotter), I was glad we decided to try this cooler version. It was delicious! I used carrots instead of the beets, and I sadly had to throw out a lot of my sprouts because they were gross inside, but everything roasted up great and the dressing is delicious! I made a half batch of the dressing, which was plenty to mix through the vegetables with some left to drizzle on top. Super yum.
Rating: :D



And here is our full Christmas spread! Including some sliced cucumbers.



And my plate, with a bit of everything.



It was a late lunch, so we were pretty full for a while afterwards. We watched Christmas Inheritance on Netflix, which was terrible! And then we had our dessert for dinner. I had bought a Pud Vegan Christmas Pudding, which was delicious (though expensive for being so small!). I drowned my piece in some Alpro custard, and it was perfect.



I went back to yoga again on Boxing Day morning, and then spent the day pottering around, watching Buffy, and eating leftovers from the last two days. A nice break from the kitchen! But I am back in it again this weekend for New Years!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



What to get the 17 year old cat who really doesn't want anything? She is indifferent to toys and beds, and she is rarely food motivated except for Greenies. She doesn't get to eat them much because she is on her special kidney diet (and she seems to swallow most of them rather than crunch them, defeating their purpose!), so I gave her some and she was happy to have them. Her favourite game of all time is to play with an old ribbon that I dangle for her, so I also gave her this cute bright pink string for us to play with together. She doesn't ask to play often, but she is not adverse to sometimes joining in if I start. Here is a bonus picture of her!

Meals for Mum (Mother's Day and Mum's birthday 2016)

I'm a little behind in sharing specials meals that I made for special people. In this post, it will be about the meals I made for my mum last year for mothers day and also for her birthday.

First up, Mother's Day! This was a pretty fun meal. Mum loves baked beans, so I knew from the moment I saw the main recipe that I was going to make it for her sometime. She also requested a chocolate lava cake, which led to some fun times in the kitchen. Here's what we had!

Open Sesame Dressing from Blissful Bites: I made a half batch of this creamy dressing, and served it as a dip. It strangely calls for arrowroot, even though you don't heat anything to thicken it, so I just left that out. I served this with some Beanfields BBQ chips and some carrot and celery sticks.
Rating: :)



Maple-Baked Beans & Cornbread Casserole from But I Could Never Go Vegan: Unfortunately, the ratios for this seemed to be a bit out. I ended up with a very thick cornbread layer on top of an almost minimal layer of beans. I would consider making it in a smaller dish with only half the amount of cornbread for a better ratio. That is nothing against the cornbread though, it was a lovely light and fluffy one (I used a blend of half whole spelt and half AP flour in place of the whole wheat pastry flour). Also, this claims to serve 12 to 14, but really it serves about 6.
Rating: :)





Chocolate Molten Lava Cakes with Raspberry Sauce from Chloe's Kitchen: Thankfully these tasted good, because they did not hold their shapes once they plopped out of their molds. Also, it was hard to unmold, because everything was very hot and it was hard to get a good grip with oven mitts on. And then they just kind of collapsed on themselves, though didn't actually split. The chocolate chips also kind of spread a bit with baking, so they had more of a centre ooze than a lava flow. But the good thing is, they tasted great! The recipe says to store the raspberry sauce in the fridge once made, but mine set up like a gel when I did that and I had to reheat it again.
Rating: :)



Her birthday is later in the year, and this year we had my brother home from the UK as well! She requested a fairly light dinner, with cake of course.

Edamame-Mint Hummus from The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook: I made a half recipe of this refreshing dip, which gave me about 1.5 cups (the recipe says a whole batch makes 4 cups, so mine came out a bit under expected). This dip is lovely, creamy and fresh, plus very pretty. I left out the chile flakes, and added a bit of extra mint. It says to serve with pita points, but I served it with cucumber slices and it was just delightful.
Rating: :)



Miso-Glazed Eggplant from Chloe's Kitchen: This interpretation of nasu dengaku is a little on the sweet side, but still very pleasant. I used 5 eggplants to get the one and a half pounds (the recipe saus 3 will give you this), and I doubled the sauce because Mum likes a lot of sauce. We had these with sushi rice, baby spinach, and broccoli.
Rating: :)





Dark Chocolate Fudge Cake with Fudge Frosting from Chloe's Vegan Desserts: This is meant to be a double layer cake, but I just made it as one layer for a more manageable amount (this is a lesson we learned during with my Dad's birthday cake... that story to come in a later post). The cake has coffee in it, but as I am not a caffeine person (or a coffee taste person) I used some weak decaf, and I also added 1/2 tsp of chocolate extract. The cake was good, I liked it. The problem was that the frosting was just way too sweet for me. It has melted chocolated in it, and I used 70%, so a darker chocolate may help with that, but there is so much icing sugar in it. Not for me. However, my mum loved it. So if you like icing, you'll be right. You do need to let the frosting set a little bit before putting it on the cake, or it is too oozy (the recipe says to apply immediately before it sets at all).
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Mum used to love giving Sahara her bear hugging cuddle walks, and Sahara was a big fan of it as well. Miss those walks with her.

Menu: Spring Dinner Menu from Blissful Bites

Part of trying to heal is apparently doing things that previously brought me joy, and blogging is one of those things, so I am going to try and get back into it. There is also something that I find immensely soothing about blogging, and it allows me to focus and think about something else without being too strenuous for my exhausted brain. So I am going to start trying to blog regularly again. After all, my backlog of photos from cookbooks and eating out isn't going to keep working through itself.

People who know me know that I can't resist a menu! This is the spring dinner menu from Blissful Bites (not to be confused with Blissful Basil from my last post) by Christy Morgan. You can see other things that I have made from this cookbook here.

Lemon-Roasted Asparagus: I love roasted asparagus, I think it is the nicest way to have asparagus. This comes together very quickly, and it turns out that lemon roasts beautifully as well. I had to use dried oregano in the herb blend, as I didn't have any fresh.
Rating: :)



Brown Rice: Boiled Method: I normally make rice in the rice cooker, no shame. It is easy and frees up another hotplate on the stove. Christy has you soak the rice (medium or short-grain) for several hours before cooking. I needed to add extra water above what she mentions so that it didn't dry out mid-cook. Her version takes 45 minutes of covered simmering. She recommends using kombu or salt, and I used salt.
Rating: :)



Orange-'Wakame' Cucumber Salad: So I was convinced I had all the ingredients for this, only to then find at the last minute that I didn't have wakame. So I used arame instead. This is a very light and refreshing salad, that has a nice sweet, salty and vinegar dressing.
Rating: :)



Black-Eyed Pea BBQ Stew: I skipped the first step of this recipe, which involves cooking the beans, as I had some pre-cooked beans in my freezer. I used 2 cups worth. I needed to add a little extra water to simmer the beans and veggies. Once you have cooked beans, this stew comes together so easily, and very quickly.
Rating: :)



And here is the whole menu on a plate. This worked beautifully as a complete meal, everything tasted so nice together.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This little girl is keeping me going. I mentioned previously that Dim Sim is very happy to finally get to be an only cat. Spending time together and redefining our relationship in a one-on-one capacity has been very sweet, though heartbreaking for me.

Recipe Round-Up: Blissful Bites

Time for another round-up! This time from the wonderful Blissful Bites by Christy Morgan. Within the chapters, recipes are broken up by season (or anytime), so I have listed what season they belong to for each one. To see all my posts about this book, click here.

Hawaiian Tofu and Veggies with Coconut Polenta (Summer): The tofu and vegetables are meant to be made as skewers, but I couldn't be bothered with that so I just sauteed everything. I left out the capsicum from the veggies. The BBQ marinade is a mix of BBQ sauce and pineapple juice, as well as some other tasties. There was some leftover for drizzling over everything, including the polenta. I made a half-batch of the polenta, and got four side servings. I used a mix of light coconut milk and water to keep the coconut fat content low for me.
Rating: Tofu and Veggies :), Polenta :)



Vegan 'Eggs' Benedict (Anytime): This was a fun brinner for me and my mum one night. The 'eggs' are scrambled tofu, served with tomato and kale on toast and covered in an oil-free hollandaise sauce. The scramble is meant to have some veggies in it, but I left them out for a more classic take. The sauce is based on silken tofu and lots of nooch. My mum is very picky about Hollondaise sauce, and she gave this one a thumbs up. I served this with extra kale and potato gems.
Rating: :)



Broccoli Salad with Creamy Mustard Dressing (Anytime): I've made this salad a number of times, and it is delicious! It is really easy to make, and also keeps well (so great for potlucks). Broccoli, carrots, radishes and chickpeas are coated in a mayo-based mustard dressing. So good!
Rating: :D



Blissful Mediterranean Salad (Spring): This Israeli couscous based salad is served just warm, and has zucchini, sun-dried and cherry tomatoes. olives and corn in a vinegar dressing. I was unexpectedly out of balsamic, so I made do with red wine vinegar. It was nice. Made 2 lunch-sized servings over green (the recipe says 4-6 servings, I assume they mean as a side).



Not-Your-Usual Pad Thai (Spring): This is a fusion of Thai curry and Pad-Thai sauce, which includes interesting ingredients like almonds, apricot jam, and dulse. It is served over rice noodles (I used a 200g package of pad thai noodles) and lots of veggies. I also served it with some store-bought flavoured tofu.
Rating: :)



Quinoa Tabouli (Spring): I had leftover quinoa, so this came together very quickly. Tomatoes, cucumber, dried apricot and herbs in a tangy dressing made for a refreshing lunch. It keeps great as well.
Rating: :)



Simple Lemon-Scented Basmati Rice (Spring): This was more a faint wiff of lemon, I would definitely add more lemon next time. Peas and parsley add some green colour, and pumpkin seeds give some crunch.
Rating: :)



Fiesta Quinoa Salad (Summer): This is a great salad to make ahead, to take for lunches or a potluck. As well as quinoa it has corn, black beans and tomato... I left out the yellow capsicum and added corn.
Rating: :)



Asian Millet and Quinoa Pilaf (Autumn): Unfortunately yhe asian flavours don't come through strongly, so consider doubling them if you make this recipe. The millet and quinoa mix becomes very creamy, and is studded with zucchini, edamame and corn. I served this with some roasted green beans.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Jodi knows it is important to keep up with the local news with the nurses at work!